The rebirth of images in the film essay

Avant-garde documentarians bring to life images forgotten at the bottom of a drawer. Family albums, once a minor record, become powerful when worked on by artists. Private images are reborn, bringing to mind an era and filling the present with symbolic content. By changing context, the images favour reflection on questions of identity, memory and subjectivity. Thus, through the re-signification of private images, the modern documentary explores poetic experiences and language. The family photographs used in the documentary narrative bring back loved ones, while at the same time revealing hidden stories. Barthes’ idea is that a photograph is inseparable from its referent. As such, it is proof of the existence of a past. A photo says ’that was’, becoming the starting point for the artist’s invention. The Rebirth of Images in Film essay analyses the family archive as re-signified in the work of directors Alan Berliner and Andrés Di Tella.